1. Field
Apparatuses and methods consistent with exemplary embodiments relate to volume rendering, and more particularly, to volume rendering using a maximum intensity projection (MIP) scheme.
2. Description of the Related Art
A medical imaging system provides medical data as visual information for diagnosis by using various schemes. The medical data is obtained by reformatting, in a three-dimensional (3D) format, overlapping cross-sectional images of an object, e.g., a human organ, which are obtained by three-dimensional (3D) medical imaging devices, such as a computed tomography (CT) device, a magnetic resonance (MR) device, and the like.
Recently, along with the development of the technology of medical imaging devices, such as the CT device and the MR device, medical images may be acquired within a relatively short time. For example, in a hospital, several hundreds to thousands of images may be generated for each examination. However, while bulk image information provides useful diagnostic information, much time and efforts are required to read a plurality of images one by one in the related art method of reading two-dimensional (2D) images. To solve this problem, the 3D medical imaging system provides 3D medical imaging data as visual information useful for diagnosis by using various schemes.
Examples of 3D medical image visualization include a direct volume rendering (DVR) scheme, a maximum intensity projection (MIP) scheme, a multi-planar reformatting (MPR) scheme, and the like.
The MIP includes generating a 2D image by determining a pixel value based on a maximum value from among sample values of volume data located in a direction of a light beam passing through respective pixels along a gaze direction. The MIP scheme is easy to implement and is useful to visualize an object such as a bone, a blood vessel, or the like having a larger brightness value than a surrounding region. Therefore, the MIP scheme is widely used in various imaging fields, e.g., diagnosing vascular stenosis from an angiographic image, determining a bone fracture from a CT image, and/or detecting a structural defect of a metal injection molded product.